POP/JAZZ

POP/JAZZ; Songs for Christmas With a Latin Beat

By JON PARELES

Published: December 21, 1990

Yomo Toro remembers a time before Santa Claus. When the 57-year-old musician was growing up in Puerto Rico, in the coastal town of Guanica, children would go to sleep on Christmas Eve with packets of hay in their beds. The next morning, the hay -- for the camels of the Magi -- would be gone, with Christmas presents in its place. Santa Claus arrived in Puerto Rico years later, part of an Americanization of its culture.

Mr. Toro was thinking about the traditional Puerto Rican Christmas a few days ago because tonight at S.O.B.'s he and his group will be performing songs for the season. They aren't necessarily reverent; one, borrowed from the Dominican Republic, is a merengue about someone who's sampled too much Christmas rum. Others will be Puerto Rican aguinaldos, which call for singers to improvise decimas (10-line poems with a fixed rhyme scheme, a style dating back to the 17th century) that end up with a prearranged line, a competition akin to a rap freestyle.

"In Puerto Rico, people make parties in their homes and bring in 4 or 5 or 10 trovadores," Mr. Toro said, referring to singers. "You have to make up nine lines, and if they don't rhyme, you are out. It is a contest, and sometimes it can go on for the whole night. The trovadores read the Bible, they read about life, they read about everything in the world to prepare their minds so that they can do the decimas. It is very difficult to do." Rural Revelers

The competitions are part of a Puerto Rican tradition called the paranda, in which roving bands of friends move from house to house, gathering revelers along the way as they sing, drink home-brewed sugar-cane rum and eat traditional Christmas fare like roast pork and arroz con dulce, a rice pudding. The festivities can continue for days on end. "The jibaros celebrate more deeply in the heart than the people from the big towns," Mr. Toro said. "People from the city are more sophisticated, but the people from the mountains, the campesinos, they feel it more -- they are more superstitious, more spiritual. The people in the cities have no time for that."

Mr. Toro plays the cuatro, a 10-stringed, mandolinlike instrument that is integral to Puerto Rican jibaro (hillbilly), or rural music; it has a clear, crystalline tone and sends arpeggios cascading through the traditional Puerto Rican bomba and plena. His father was a cuatro player, and when Mr. Toro was 6 years old, he started to take the instrument off its peg on the wall and play it while his father was away at work, using the tooth of a comb for a pick.

"One day, when I was 7 years old, I was playing and I suddenly saw my father standing at the foot of the bed," Mr. Toro recalled. "I figured, 'I'm touching his cuatro -- he's going to kill me. And I play it better than he does -- he's going to kill me.' He just said, 'Play the same thing you were doing before,' and in my little mind I thought, 'I'm going to have to play better than Segovia.'

"But when I was done I looked at my father, and he was crying. He went out to the yard and cut down a tree, and he made me a little cuatro from that, the cuatro I learned on. From that day, he was much closer to me. And he always told me, 'I want you to learn more.' He inspired me." Backup for Willie Colon

Unlike his family, Mr. Toro never worked for the Puerto Rican sugar industry; he was able to support himself as a musician. He came to New York in 1956, and made his breakthrough in 1968 when the salsa bandleader Willie Colon had him add the cuatro to a salsa record. "He pushed me to play salsa," Mr. Toro said, "and I owe him a lot." The first album they made together was a salsa Christmas record, "Asalto Navideno" ("Christmas Assault"), which is still heard annually on Latin radio stations.

Since then, Mr. Toro has brought jibaro music to all sorts of unexpected contexts. He has worked regularly with the Fania All-Stars, salsa's supergroup; he has collaborated with the Latin-rock guitarist Carlos Santana. His 1988 album, "Funky Jibaro," includes funk, a slow bolero, and a tune called "Mambo Oriental" that lives up to its title. No matter what context Mr. Toro comes up with, his cuatro sends speedy runs and arpeggios whizzing through songs in a style that is virtuosic but somehow homey.

Mr. Toro's Christmas shows are prized by salsa fans, and his Christmas songs are among his favorite repertory. With a laugh, he passed on the advice from one song, a plena called "Vive tu Vida Tranquilo." "Live a tranquil life," it suggests. "If you worry, you'll die, and if you don't worry, you'll die anyway."

Yomo Toro and his group are to perform tonight at 11 P.M. and 1 A.M. at S.O.B.'s, 204 Varick Street, at Houston Street, Manhattan. Admission is $15. Information: (212) 243-4940.

Photo: Yomo Toro and his group are to perform tonight at S.O.B.'s. (Mark Babushkin)